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October 15, 2018 New Case Study on Promoting Healthier Indoor Air Quality

Over the past year, we've added a new case study on promoting healthier indoor environments, and added five new other resources in this topic area. We've also added a resource alert on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) tool. You can see the case study in the left hand column below and the resource alert in the right hand column below Let us know what you think.

Most Recent Environmental Health Case Studies

"Clean Air at Home: Small Steps Make a Big Difference" is a targeted, community-based social marketing campaign that reduces young families’ exposures to environmental contaminants at home such as mould, dust, fumes from toxic cleaners and tobacco smoke. Almost three in four participants changed some of their behaviors and almost one half reported performing all five of the behaviors being promoted.

CAC's HSBC Clean Air Achievers programs provides youth with a chance to meet high profile athletes and be inspired by personal messages to adopt healthier, more active and sustainable lifestyles. The program has dual goals of reducing air pollution and increasing physical activity levels via active transportation. Designated a Landmark case study in 2013.

20/20 The Way to Clean Air involved individuals in the Greater Toronto Area in reducing home energy use and vehicle use by 20%. It asked participants to make a small commitment (some easy-to-do activities done for a period of two weeks), leading to a larger commitment (longer-term, greater cost savings actions), and connected them with programs and services that helped them succeed.

The Switch Out program draws on the voluntary assistance of Canadian automotive recyclers to remove light switches containing mercury from end-of-life vehicles. Initiated by the Clean Air Foundation (CAF) in June 2001, Switch Out has significantly reduced the impact of mercury disposal into the environment.

The Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (CAP) brought about a quick change in thinking regarding pesticides, and engaged citizens and other organizations to organize their own pesticide reduction efforts, with their Pesticide Free Naturally campaign in the province of Quebec, Canada. Their program used action kits with lawn signs, community workshops and events, low-cost memberships and mass media. A survey included with the action kits (self reported) indicated changes in pesticide use as well. This campaign built on the one originally developed by the Green Communities Association.

Manitoba heavy construction companies are more eager than ever to learn safety, health and environment skills since the industry's trade association launched a revamped, user-friendly new support program. Organizers of the Manitoba Heavy Construction Associations Safety, Health Environment Program (SHEP) hope this interest will lead to fewer worker injuries and environmental accidents. Write-up funding provided by Environment Canada's National Office of Pollution Prevention.

The City of Waterloo has dramatically decreased its use of pesticides on municipally owned land through practices that promote healthy, vigorous turf and soil. The city's Plant Health Care Program (PHCP), first conceived of more than 20 years ago, has over time become Waterloo's preferred method of turf care. Funding for this write-up was provided by Environment Canada's National Office of Pollution Prevention.

An extremely successful, media-based public relations campaign has convinced hundreds of thousands of Seattle-area homeowners to turn their backs on many environmentally harmful lawn care practices and embrace elements of natural lawn care. The campaign also uses a habit change kit that includes a lawn sign.

The Calgary Commuter Challenge is an annual, weeklong event designed to encourage commuters to use cleaner and healthier forms of transportation. Participating organizations compete with each other for the highest rates of employee participation. The city of Calgary also competes against other Canadian cities in the nation-wide Commuter Challenge.

This case study describes the experiences of a Canadian woman working as a project leader promoting sustainable agriculture in a rural village in Panama. It provides some tips on improving the success of programs aimed at promoting sustainable agriculture, with a focus on building partnerships and achieving buy-in.

Turn it Off is a community-based initiative to encourage individuals to avoid idling their vehicles while waiting at such places as school pick-up areas and transit Kiss and Ride parking lots. Replicability: high.

This ongoing program educates the public and provides incentives to improve air quality in Portland. It uses non-regulatory approaches that target vehicles, lawnmowers, paints and certain consumer products - to reduce emissions from Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).

The Cambie Corridor Consortium (CCC) was the first transportation management association (TMA) established in Canada. A TMA is an alliance of business, government, and other groups that aims to reduce traffic in a particular area by pooling resources and expertise. Cambie's aim is to reduce the number of single occupancy vehicles commuting to the Cambie/Broadway area of Vancouver and improve air quality by providing alternative transportation solutions and information. Approximately 25,000 employees are represented through CCC's 21 members.

When air pollution concentrations approach unhealthy levels, people living and working within the San Francisco Bay Area are notified, and encouraged to avoid activities that pollute the air. Partnerships with local businesses and public agencies allow the program to target commuters at work, and offer information, incentives and services to help them choose less polluting alternatives.

Most Recent Environmental Health Resources

A comprehensive picture of what disables and kills people across countries, time, age, and sex. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) provides a tool to quantify health loss from hundreds of diseases, injuries, and risk factors, so that health systems can be improved and disparities can be eliminated.Collected and analyzed by a consortium of more than 2,300 researchers, the data capture premature death and disability from more than 300 diseases and injuries in 195 countries

When consensus about a risk or mitigating behavior is newly developed and/or not clearly understood, communicating that consensus through teachers / instructors can be critical. While this blog entry focuses on climate change, it may also apply to new understandings in many topic areas.

This document provides a brief summary of options for assessing what portion of any measured behavior changes resulted from your program and what portion resulted from other influences. These options can also be used to attribute the affects of your program on a wide range of related variables such as resources used, pollutants released, accident rates and health status.

Includes a climate change communication primer for public health professionals, and reports based on ongoing national surveys of Americans' climate change and energy beliefs, attitudes, policy support and behavior

This is the first report on this theme written for a European audience. It follows a 2013 report on communicating with a centre-right audiences in Britain. The approach taken is strongly grounded in the wider research into political values and framing and is intended to complement similar research in the US. Read More »

This guide presents information on effective climate change communication in a digestible, actionable form to enable communicators to 'up their game' when engaging Americans on climate solutions of all types and scales.

This report provides results from three studies that collectively find that global warming and climate change are often not synonymous--they mean different things to different people--and activate different sets of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors, as well as different degrees of urgency about the need to respond.